Various types of printing apparatus have developed and manufactured for outputting various kinds of results or works prepared using a computer. Among these, widely used printing apparatus are largely divided into an inkjet printer and a laser beam printer; it is well known that printing shops as well as homes and offices are provided with the inkjet printer because the inkjet printer can be provided in much lower price compared with the laser beam printer for obtaining an output with almost same quality as that of the laser beam printer. Conventionally, the inkjet printer prints characters or images by jetting ink onto a surface of a paper while an ink-cartridge loaded on a carrier within the printer moves horizontally. Describing in more detail, when the ink-cartridge is loaded on the carrier, then the ink contained within the ink-cartridge is supplied to a printer nozzle and jetted onto a paper by an electric signal from a control part of the printer. At this time, printing signal transferring contacts of the printer and contacts of a flexible printed wiring board of the ink-cartridge come into contact with each other to transfer signals, thus an amount of ink jetting is controlled so as to print characters or images.
Meanwhile, as an ink-cartridge, which is once used up, is discarded, very large amount of wastes and extravagance of resources are occurred in this process. In order to solve these problems of an increase of maintaining cost which customers would have to pay, the occurrence of the wastes and the extravagance of resources, a technique for refilling ink to an ink-cartridge of which ink is used up and recycling it has been developed and commercialized. It is possible to recycle the ink-cartridge because it is sufficient for the ink-cartridge to contain ink therein and supply the ink when a proper passage is connected. That is, in the case of an ink-cartridge of which ink is normally used up, because the ink alone is used up while a containing part of the ink-cartridge, a nozzle, contacts of a flexible printed wiring board or etc. are hardly damaged, the ink-cartridge can be used like a new ink-cartridge only by refilling ink to the ink containing part of the ink-cartridge. Damage of nozzle is mostly an obstruction of the nozzle due to remained ink, and such damage is mostly temporary damage that even a common user can easily removes by applying moisture to the nozzle using a damp cloth or etc.
However, if a flexible printed wiring board which receives a printing signal, status signal or etc. for controlling an ink jetting amount is damaged, malfunction that an ink jetting amount can not be correctly controlled or an amount of remained ink may be inaccurately measured is occurred, and thus such ink-cartridge can not be recycled. It is well known that ink-cartridge refillers conventionally have an ink-cartridge tester for testing possibility of use of an ink-cartridge to be refilled so as to prevent exhaustive failure of filling ink to an ink-cartridge, damaged as above mentioned and thus impossible of recycling.
In the various apparatus above mentioned onto which an ink-cartridge is loaded/unloaded such as an ink-cartridge loading/unloading apparatus for a printer, an ink-cartridge loading/unloading apparatus for a tester or etc., a conventional apparatus adopts a method that an ink-cartridge is loaded by pivoting itself by predetermined angle around a lower portion thereof (or of an ink-cartridge mounting member) when loading it. However, the conventional loading/unloading apparatus of pivot type has several problems in use.
Firstly, in the case that an ink-cartridge is loaded onto a tester in pivot manner, it is highly possible that contacts of a flexible printed wiring board of an ink-cartridge and signal transferring contacts of a tester can not come into contact with each other in correct places and are offset and thus come into contact with each other in incorrect places.
Secondly, in addition to above phenomenon, as pressure is distributed not uniformly but in bias by its characteristics, damage such as a scar tends to be generated in contacts of the ink-cartridge and contacts of the tester.
Such problems consequently give permanent damage to contact circuit of an ink-cartridge and thus results in a low recycling rate of ink cartridges.